At the range I frequent, it is not uncommomn to find people practicing for high level bullseye pistol competition. They send big bullseyes out to 50yd, verify that their spotting scopes are properly focused, and then very deliberately take slow shots one hand only.

No matter how many times I see this, I am never hypnotized into sending my target out to 50yd and practicing the exact same thing.

But for some reason, there is a subspecies of Homo gunnutien that seems to lack any degree of imagination or self-determination. That is the only reason I can fathom that a new shooter, with a gun he can’t even hold properly, would try to shoot 5-6 shots per second right after someone else on the range starts shooting fast.

Damn the fact that he may miss his 14×18 target completely for most — or all — of those shots (at 15 feet). He’s making the Loud Noise fast, too! Weeeeeeee…

The funniest one is the pistol shooter on a lane next to the guy with a tricked out, optically enhanced, billion-dollar muzzle brake’d AR (who is also shooting at 15 feet). You can actually feel the mental waves of “If I had a 30 round magazine” emanating like a ruptured sewer pipe from the pistol newbie’s skull.

If one’s ego is so all-encompassing that he feels driven to out do the dude next to him, you’d think said idiot’s ego was also fragile enough to be shattered by his horrible performance when he jumps so far out of his lane that he gets hit by oncoming traffic. Alas, too many twice-a-year hobbyists measure their shooting success by sound rather than by sight.

10 Responses to “Monkey See”

I don’t understand why you hold back. You ought to let go occasionally and tell us what you really think.

More to the point, most of my students have had little or no experience with guns. They have no gun sense and no idea of how discourteous their behavior might be. They are in an alien environment from their previous life experience. Most are quick to pick up the gun sense and the courtesies from watching and listening to what they find annoys them. However, a not insignificant number require some mentoring to get the idea. Only a small few never get the idea, but they can cause an inordinate amount of stress at the range.

The guns environment is not different from many other environments I have experienced. Going in I thought I was entering an elite environment where intelligence, common sense and courtesy would be exceptionally high. The two environments that come readily to mind where reality was less than my initial expectations were becoming a pilot and becoming a corporate manager. Now I add becoming a concealed carry instructor as just one more reminder that people are people and the proportions of goofs remains pretty consistent.

Continue to be an evangelist and make a difference at the margins, but a difference none the less.

Even though I’m fairly new to shooting, I don’t feel the need to do things that are obviously beyond my skill set. Every so often I’ll send my target to 25 yards and fire a magazine or two to see if I can get hits at that range but for the most part I shoot at 15 yards since that seems to be where my accuracy begins to suffer.

Will — There is a huge difference between pushing yourself and mimicking others. If you decide to try your hand at 25yd shooting because it’s a challenge, that’s great. It’s the people who try to duplicate your drills because of butt-hurt egos that need help, not the shooters like you who are genuinely trying to improve themselves.

There were some german psychologists who have done some sort of study (sorry, I can’t give you a link – long time ago I have read about it in some german magazine) on something they called “GTI effect”. Which is basically, that when you try to overtake somebody on the road said person will inadvertently speed up. Well, this study showed, that mostly they are doing that totally unconsciously.

I think that’s the same effect – the newbies are not doing it consciously…
Well at least I can talk for myself – it takes some concentration and will to slow down to your own pace when in the next lane you hear “a typewriter”…